Marina Bay with Suntec City and National Stadium and Kallang in the background.

2/23/2010

BTO is the best system

Ho Geok Choo asked Mah Bow Tan whether HDB should return to the old system for flat application. Mah Bow Tan said negative. The BTO is the best system and it even reduced the waiting time from 7 or 8 years to the current 3 to 4 years. How can anyone argue against such logic?
In the past the queue was 150,000 long and ended up with 31,000 surplus flats that needed 5 years to clear. Today we still have many times oversubcribed flats on launching but still not all flats are sold? How come?
I think I can try to explain about the old system, the 150,000 queue and 31,000 surplus flats built. It was badly managed in the first place. There was genuine demand in the early stages when the baby boomers were starting to grow up and having families. And there was acute housing shortage. Of course some idiots allowed the flats to be overbuilt to the extend of 31,000 flats. If we have the talents like we have today, no such thing will happen. And the facts speak for itself. No more surpluses and more more 150,000 queue today.
So Ho Geok Choo must have been satisfied that her question was answered. No more question.
I ponder again on why there was no queue when a new launch was often oversubscribed many times over? Phantom buyers I think. And all the kpkb about young people not getting their flats are just false noises.
What about those who could not afford to buy the affordable flats and thus never even make it to the application stage? Would they be considered as not applicable to the demand equation? What about those that were ruled out of the HDB scheme by virtue of their income, those exceeding $8k or $10k, or those who may meet the money criteria but because of their family commitments, could not afford to buy the flats they wanted to? These are not demands since they did not apply to HDB. And all the singles and those that cannot get together a family unit but still needing a place to stay, not part of the demand too?
The BTO scheme is indeed very neat and clean. Those who for whatever reason, needing flats, but ruled out or cannot afford to, and never apply are not part of the demand and no need to bother or look at.
So, since there are no application, so no demand and no need to build. Where got housing problem?

5 comments:

stephen
said...

Chenghu's policy has changed over the years. Instead of them living with the problem of having surpluse flats and not make enough money out of it, they turned 'smart' and transfer the problem to the people. It is better for the chenghu to have a long long long list of citizens waiting where they do not lose out economically, than to have them stuck with not knowing how to get rid of 'excess' flats.

The bottom line here is, there was and still is a planning failure on the part of the Home Ministry. They do not know how to go about solving this problem so pass the problem to the people. And rather than confronting it upfront, the people in charge shamelessly defend their on the affordability and sufficient supply. Ground feel? Zero!

If the govt wants to help the people to provide affordable flats and as shorter waiting time it is so easy to do so. You don't need to pay millions to anyone to solve this problem. Any O level student would be able to find a better solution than this BTO scheme.

Ho Geok Choo should just submit a proposal on what could be done to improve on the present system. Tell the minister in parliament what could be done and let the minister rejects her proposal.

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